Freedom

The world grows green on a thousand hills -
    By a thousand willows the bees are humming,
And a million birds by a million rills,
    Sing of the golden season coming.
But, gazing out on the sun-kist lea,
    And hearing a thrush and a blue-bird singing,
I feel that the Summer is all for me,
    And all for me are the joys it is bringing.

All for me the bumble-bee
    Drones his song in the perfect weather;
And, just on purpose to sing to me,
    Thrush and blue-bird came North together.
Just for me, in red and white,
    Bloom and blossom the fields of clover;
And all for me and my delight
    The wild Wind follows and plays the lover.

The mighty sun, with a scorching kiss
    (I have read, and heard, and do not doubt it)
Has burned up...

(Macmillan's Magazine, March 1864.)


Like flowers sequestered from the sun
    And wind of summer, day by day
I dwindled paler, whilst my hair
    Showed the first tinge of grey.

'Oh what is life, that we should live?
    Or what is death, that we must die?
A bursting bubble is our life:
    I also, what am I?'

'What is your grief? now tell me, sweet,
    That I may grieve,' my sister said;
And stayed a white embroidering hand
    And raised a golden head:

Her tresses showed a richer mass,
    Her eyes looked softer than my own,
Her figure had a statelier height,
    Her voice a tenderer tone.

'Some must be second and not first;
    All cannot be the first of all:
Is not this, too, but vanity?
    I...

The treacherous sands had caught our boat,
    And held it with a strong embrace
And death at our imprisoned crew
    Was sternly looking face to face.

With anxious hearts, but failing strength,
    We strove to push the boat from shore;
But all in vain, for there we lay
    With bated breath and useless oar.

Around us in a fearful storm
    The fiery hail fell thick and fast;
And we engirded by the sand,
    Could not return the dreadful blast.

When one arose upon whose brow
    The ardent sun had left his trace,
A noble purpose strong and high
    Uplighting all his dusky face.

Perchance within that fateful hour
    The wrongs of ages thronged apace;
But with it came the glorious hope
    Of swift deliverance to his rac...

The bird, let loose in eastern skies,[1]
    When hastening fondly home,
Ne'er stoops to earth her wing, nor flies
    Where idle warblers roam.
But high she shoots thro' air and light,
    Above all low delay,
Where nothing earthly bounds her flight,
    Nor shadow dims her way.

So grant me, GOD, from every care
    And stain of passion free,
Aloft, thro' Virtue's purer air,
    To hold my course to Thee!
No sin to cloud, no lure to stay
    My Soul, as home she springs;--

Thy Sunshine on her joyful way,
    Thy Freedom in her wings!

Summer's pleasures they are gone like to visions every one,
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on.
I tried to call them back, but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and forever far away.
Dear heart, and can it be that such raptures meet decay?
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay,
I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play
On its bank at "clink and bandy," "chock" and "taw" and "ducking stone,"
Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own
Like a ruin of the past all alone.

When I used to lie and sing by old Eastwell's boiling spring,
When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a swing,
And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a thing,
With heart just like a feather, now as heav...

Here in turn succeed and rule
Carter, smith, and village fool,
Then again the place is known
As tavern, shop, and Sunday-school;
Now somehow it's come to me
To light the fire and hold the key,
Here in Heaven to reign alone.

All the walls are white with lime,
Big blue periwinkles climb
And kiss the crumbling window-sill;
Snug inside I sit and rhyme,
Planning, poem, book, or fable,
At my darling beech-wood table
Fresh with bluebells from the hill.

Through the window I can see
Rooks above the cherry-tree,
Sparrows in the violet bed,
Bramble-bush and bumble-bee,
And old red bracken smoulders still
Among boulders on the hill,
Far too bright to seem quite dead.

But old Death, who can't forget,
Waits his time and watche...

The spring is coming! hear it blow!
The rain and wind have cleared the snow;
And I am going to play my fill
With sunlight on the windy hill.

And I am going to laugh and run,
And be the comrade of the sun;
And, like the wildflowers, wink my eyes
At him and at the springtime skies.

And I am going to leap and shout
And toss my hair and arms about,
And fill my soul with sunshine as
The blossoms do and waving grass.

And I am going to dance and sing
And match the swallow on the wing,
And put my arms about each tree,
And kiss it as the sun does me.

And I am going to lie face down
Upon the hillside, far from town,
And hug it as the sunlight does,
And watch the pussy-willows fuzz.

I wish I was as big and bright
As ...

Sons of the bright, green island,
    Gathered by the pine-fringed lake,
In honour of his memory,
    Who battled for your sake,
Listen, we too pay our tribute
    To a fame that well endures;
He, who ventured much for liberty,
    Is ours as well as yours.

Men fought in vain for freedom,
    And lay down in felon graves;
"Your noblest then were exiles,
    Your proudest then were slaves"
When the people, blind and furious,
    Maddened by oppression's scorn,
Struggled, seethed in wild upheaval,
    Was the Liberator born.

Who took the sword fell by the sword,
    This man was born to show,
How thoughts would win where steel had failed
    One hundred years ago
By force the patriot tried in vain
    To stem oppression's mig...

In an old world garden dreaming,
Where the flowers had human names,
Methought, in fantastic seeming,
They disported as squires and dames.

Of old in Rosamond's Bower,
With it's peacock hedges of yew,
One could never find the flower
Unless one was given the clue;
So take the key of the wicket,
Who would follow my fancy free,
By formal knot and clipt thicket,
And smooth greensward so fair to see

And while Time his scythe is whetting,
Ere the dew from the grass has gone,

The Four Seasons' flight forgetting,
As they dance round the dial stone;

With a leaf from an old English book,
A Jonquil will serve for a pen.

Let us note from the green arbour's nook,
Flowers masking like women and men.


FIRST in VENUS'...

I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this horrible place.


I am out of humanity’s reach,
I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech,
I start at the sound of my own.
The beasts, that roam over the plain,
My form with indifference see;
They are so unacquainted with man,
Their tameness is shocking to me.


Society, friendship, and love,
Divinely bestow’d upon man,
O, had I the wings of a dove,
How soon would I taste you again!
My sorrows I then might assuage
In the ways of reli...

On great cathedral window I have seen
A summer sunset swoon and sink away,
Lost in the splendours of immortal art.
Angels and saints and all the heavenly hosts,
With smiles undimmed by half a thousand years,
From wall and niche have met my lifted gaze.
Sculpture and carving and illumined page,
And the fair, lofty dreams of architects,
That speak of beauty to the centuries -
All these have fed me with divine repasts.
Yet in my mouth is left a bitter taste,
The taste of blood that stained that age of art.

Those glorious windows shine upon the black
And hideous structure of the guillotine;
Beside the haloed countenance of saints
There hangs the multiple and knotted lash.
The Christ of love, benign and beautiful,
Looks at the torture-rack, by hate conce...

I.

The spirits of the forest,
That to the winds give voice -
I lie the livelong April day
And wonder what it is they say
That makes the leaves rejoice.

The spirits of the forest,
That breathe in bud and bloom -
I walk within the black-haw brake
And wonder how it is they make
The bubbles of perfume.

The spirits of the forest,
That live in every spring -
I lean above the brook's bright blue
And wonder what it is they do
That makes the water sing.

The spirits of the forest.
That haunt the sun's green glow -
Down fungus ways of fern I steal
And wonder what they can conceal,
In dews, that twinkles so.

The spirits of the forest,
They hold me, heart and hand -
And, oh! the bird they send by light,
...

As o'er his furrowed fields which lie
Beneath a coldly dropping sky,
Yet chill with winter's melted snow,
The husbandman goes forth to sow,
Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blast
The ventures of thy seed we cast,
And trust to warmer sun and rain
To swell the germs and fill the grain.
Who calls thy glorious service hard?
Who deems it not its own reward?
Who, for its trials, counts it less
A cause of praise and thankfulness?
It may not be our lot to wield
The sickle in the ripened field;
Nor ours to hear, on summer eves,
The reaper's song among the sheaves.
Yet where our duty's task is wrought
In unison with God's great thought,
The near and future blend in one,
And whatsoe'er is willed, is done!
And ours the grateful service whence
Comes da...

With antecedents;
With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations of past ages;
With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am:
With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome;
With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon;
With antique maritime ventures,, with laws, artizanship, wars and journeys;
With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle;
With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the crusader, and the monk;
With those old continents whence we have come to this new continent;
With the fading kingdoms and kings over there;
With the fading religions and priests;
With the small shores we look back to from our own large and present shores;
With countless years drawing themselves onward, and arrived at these years;...

1

I would I were a careless child,
Still dwelling in my Highland cave,
Or roaming through the dusky wild,
Or bounding o'er the dark blue wave;
The cumbrous pomp of Saxon [1] pride,
Accords not with the freeborn soul,
Which loves the mountain's craggy side,
And seeks the rocks where billows roll.


2.

Fortune! take back these cultur'd lands,
Take back this name of splendid sound!
I hate the touch of servile hands,
I hate the slaves that cringe around:
Place me among the rocks I love,
Which sound to Ocean's wildest roar;
I ask but this - again to rove
Through scenes my youth hath known before.


3.

Few are my years, and yet I feel
The World was ne'er design'd for me:
Ah! why do dark'ning s...

I opened the ink-well and smoke filled the room.
The smoke formed the giant frog-cat of my doom.
His web feet left dreadful slime tracks on the floor.
He had hammer and nails that he laid by the door.
He sprawled on the table, claw-hands in my hair.
He looked through my heart to the mud that was there.
Like a black-mailer hating his victim he spoke:
"When I see all your squirming I laugh till I choke
Singing of peace. Railing at battle.
Soothing a handful with saccharine prattle.
All the millions of earth have voted for fight.
You are voting for talk, with hands lily white."
He leaped to the floor, then grew seven feet high,
Beautiful, terrible, scorn in his eye:
The Devil Eternal, Apollo grown old,
With beard of bright silver and garments of gold.
"What will ...

The Lovers took within this ancient grove
Their last embrace; beside those crystal springs
The Hermit saw the Angel spread his wings
For instant flight; the Sage in yon alcove
Sate musing; on that hill the Bard would rove,
Not mute, where now the linnet only sings:
Thus everywhere to truth Tradition clings,
Or Fancy localises Powers we love.
Were only History licensed to take note
Of things gone by, her meagre monuments
Would ill suffice for persons and events:
There is an ampler page for man to quote,
A readier book of manifold contents,
Studied alike in palace and in cot.

    Glad winters on the olden farm!
        How raptures from those early times
        Commingle into fairy chimes
    Which gently banish cries of harm!
        My fainting soul finds rest the whiles
    Within the arms of memory,
    And tender scenes of boyish glee
        Transform my sorrows into smiles.

    How brightly beamed the pleasures then,
        When frigid fingers came to throw
        A wintry winding sheet of snow
    Around the silent homes of men!
    But happiness found no alarm,
        For safe with cheer, secure with love,
        She gladly grew and sweetly throve
    Through winters on the olden farm.

    With merry bells and busy sleighs,
        That sung and flew o'er icy vales
        And climbed the hills a...